Tagging May Be Harmful to Penguins

From BBC

There are many problems which must be overcome when carrying out studies on wild animals. For example when studying captive animals it is relatively easy to keep track of the animals. When carrying out studies on wild animals, especially over a long period of time, there are a few ways to make sure the same animals are used each time you sample. One of these methods involves putting a band around the flipper of a penguin and has been widely used up to now. It allows scientists to study specific individuals without having to catch them and cause them unneeded stress. The study of these animals is as important as ever, especially with the effects that climate change is having on their habitat. However, it has now been suggested that the use of these bands could actually be harmful to the animals.

When swimming, penguins use only their flippers to propel themselves forward and this is the reason that many scientists have questioned the use of these bands. Saraux and colleagues have now found that the use of these bands causes the survival rate in adult King Penguins to decrease significantly compared to the survival rate of non-banded individuals.As well as this, the breeding rate for those that survived was also significantly lowered. Finally, their study showed that banded penguins were more negatively effected by climate change than non-banded penguins as they arrived late to breed and therefore missed out on opportunities to create offspring. This study was a decade long and therefore longer than most other studies on this subject. Other methods of tagging are now going to have to be considered such as transponders under the skin of the individuals. As well as the effect these bands have on the survival rate of the animals, with the change in behaviour also considered the results of any past or future studies using these bands may be deemed insignificant and may have to be carried out again.

Reference
Saraux, C., Le Bohec, C., Durant, J.M., Viblanc, V.A., Gauthier-Clerc, M., Beaune, D., Park, Y., Yoccoz, N.G., Stenseth, N.C., Le Maho, Y., 2011. Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change. Nature 469, 203-208